


Of Hobbits, Ocarinas and Billy Joel

by translorastyrell (nerddowell)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Band Fic, Crush at First Sight, Loras and Renly are in a student band together, Loras despairs, M/M, Nerdy References, Renly is the biggest geek ever and Robb loves it, Robb is a barman on whom Renly has a crush, Romance, Sam/Loras being nauseatingly cute, Secret Crush, Sweet, The Hobbit References, The Lord of the Rings References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-09-02 21:25:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16795024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerddowell/pseuds/translorastyrell
Summary: There’s a new barman today as well, someone he’s not seen before, of similar build to Renly himself - if about three inches shorter - with auburn hair that curls around his temples and the nape of his neck, and the bluest eyes Renly’s ever seen. He’s almost a carbon copy of Sansa, if Sansa was scruff-chinned and stocky instead of lithe and elegant and female, and although it feels uncharitable to say, Renly is far more inclined to want to know this man better. In every sense, not just the Biblical (although God knows he wants to fuck or be fucked by him through a mattress as well).The man has a pleasantly rough Yorkshire accent when he stops by Renly to ask if he can get him anything else, and Renly finds himself tongue-tied for the first time in years.‘You another Stark, then? I’ve not seen you around before.’The barman laughs, pushing his sleeves up over ruddy forearms, lightly furred in brown hair, and Renly wants those strong hands all over his skin. ‘I’m Robb. Sansa’s brother.’Game of Thrones Secret Santa 2018'big' gift forafewreelthoughts!





	Of Hobbits, Ocarinas and Billy Joel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [afewreelthoughts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afewreelthoughts/gifts).



> So, this year I participated in the Game of Thrones Secret Santa on Tumblr and received [afewreelthoughts](http://afewreelthoughts.tumblr.com) as my recipient! And so, here I am, uncloaking myself to say _Happy holidays and I hope you like your presents!_

Renly is laid out on Loras’ bed, reading a tattered paperback copy of _The Fellowship of the Ring_ for probably the fiftieth time whilst his best friend rolls his eyes and explodes the head of a simulated opponent with a grenade on _Call of Duty_. Renly’s soulmark tattoo is visible at the base of his neck, nestled into the crook of his shoulder; a golden rose, occasionally dropping petals that curl and fade away the further down his chest they fall. Every so often, Loras reaches out with one hand to touch it, a small, comforting stroke of his thumb over the delicate lines, and Renly’s skin flushes and tingles in its wake, his body reacting to his soulmate’s touch. Because they are. Soulmates, that is. Loras’ tattoo, a stag with roses and vines wound around his antlers, is in the centre of his chest, hidden beneath the _Adventure Time_ tshirt he’s wearing. It’s much bigger than Renly’s, the antlers spreading almost from one shoulder to the other, with the deer’s head directly over his breastbone; it’s as showy and ostentatious as Loras himself, as Renly loves to say. Loras tends to remind him that at least his isn’t as ‘girly’ and flowery as Renly’s, which is a fair point, really.

Both of them are aware, too, of how lucky they are to know one another at all, let alone so intimately. Soulmates are rare; less than one in a million people meet theirs ever in their lifetime. Renly and Loras had met at nursery, when Renly was four and in preschool and Loras had only just joined the toddlers room. They had seen one another through the fence separating the babies’ and toddlers’ yard from the older children’s outdoor play space, and had been drawn together like two magnets. The moment their hands touched through the gap in the fence, they’d both recoiled as though burned, and angry red patches that would later become their soulmark tattoos had formed on their bodies. Renly’s carer, Cressen, had rubbed calamine lotion onto his for weeks until the skin had flaked and peeled like a bad sunburn, revealing a rosebud about an inch long that looked as though it had been inked in gold. As Renly grew, so did the rose, until it bloomed on his sixteenth birthday when Loras finally kissed him in his family’s cider cellar. He’d never asked if the same happened with Loras’ stag, but he assumed it must have done.

After that, they had dated for a couple of years - attending Renly’s Year 11 and Sixth Form proms together, in matching green waistcoats that brought out the emerald flecks in Renly’s blue eyes and the hazel in Loras’ brown ones - before splitting up, amicably, the year Renly left to attend university. All of their friends and family had been horrified that they would leave one another, that they could bear to spend any time apart at all; with how rare true soulmates were, those who did manage to find theirs were almost societally honour-bound to remain with them the rest of their lives. Both Renly and Loras gave this as the main reason why they were breaking up; although they did love one another dearly, they were fine as friends. The expected romantic attraction had been fierce, but burned out quickly, and they hadn’t liked the feeling that they were staying together out of habit, out of deference to the expectations of everyone else, rather than the actual desire to be in a romantic relationship. Since their split, Loras had met a new boyfriend, Sam, at college, and although they were chalk and cheese - Sam quiet, bookish, and definitely not into sports; Loras loud, often brash to the point of arrogance, and a keen fencer, footballer and rugby player - they got on far better as boyfriends than he and Renly ever had.

As far as Renly is concerned, soulmates are more trouble than they’re worth; although he and Loras easily (and with no small degree of relief) made the transition from romantic partners to just friends, his brother Robert and his soulmate had been a very different story. Robert’s soulmate had been a girl named Lyanna, the sister of his best friend Ned, and Robert had loved her to the point of obsession. His feelings - and soulmate bond - were not returned, however, and when Lyanna met her own soulmate Rhaegar and went off with him, Robert had fallen off the rails somewhat and become an angry, bitter alcoholic at the age of twenty. One of Renly’s earliest memories is of being five years old and Robert grasping his arm in one hamlike fist and yanking him close, voice slurred and the reek of whiskey on his breath, to make him swear he wouldn’t pay any mind to ‘that soulmate horseshit’; he’d twisted his younger brother’s arm until Renly sobbed and promised as ordered, leaving fingerprint bruises that had lasted for days. ‘That soulmate horseshit’ was one of the few things Robert and his other brother, Stannis, agreed on. Renly didn’t know whether Stannis had a soulmate at all, but if he did, it would probably have been someone or something as prickly and stoic as Stannis himself.

He hums with contentment as Loras rubs his thumb over the rose again, tracing the delicate lines of the leaves ringing the flower, and Loras smiles down at him, hitting pause on his game. Renly dog-ears his book - Margaery isn’t here to chastise him for it, and he doesn’t think Loras has ever voluntarily picked up a book in his life - and puts it down on the duvet, turning his head to meet Loras’ gaze.

‘What’s Sam’s?’ he asks, purely out of curiosity, and Loras shrugs.

‘Another flower. His is sort of pink, though. It goes up his side, from about here-’ he gestures to his own hip, ‘-to here,’ he points at his shoulder. ‘Kind of winding around his back. Looks like the ones on the walls outside Will’s house, you know, the wall creepers.’

‘Gillyflowers?’

‘I dunno, Will’s the horticultural one, you know that.’

‘Ooh, _horticultural_ ,’ Renly says with a grin, eyes sparkling. ‘Big word for you.’

‘I’ll give you something else big in a second,’ Loras threatens. ‘A big sock in that smart mouth of yours.’

Renly laughs, opens his mouth to retort, and Loras grabs one of his feet to tickle the sole, one elbow on his best friend’s stomach to hold him down. Renly’s planned smart-mouthed response is lost in a spasm of screaming and crying with laughter, flailing and kicking on the bed. He screams for real a second later when he manages to flail himself all the way off the bed, falling to land with a thud on his arse on Loras’ bedroom floor, and it’s Loras’ turn to cry with laughter, doubled over on the bed above him.

‘You’re an arse,’ Renly tells him as he climbs back up beside Loras and picks up his book again. Loras grins, sticking his tongue out between his teeth, and nods.

‘And a nice one.’

Renly has to admit, he does have him there. Loras has an arse like a peach, and if they weren’t strictly just friends, he’d still be all over it like he was as a teenager.

* * *

The next day is the start of the new university year, Renly’s third and final year of his joint honours Art History and Music Bachelor’s degree, and he’s making his way to the concert hall building to see if he can sweet-talk the receptionist into letting him have a practise room for a couple of hours so he and Loras can work on their setlist for a gig later that week. Their band - if you can really call a duo a ‘band’ - was Renly on piano, bass and rhythm guitar, backing vocals and ocarina (he’d been a big fan of the _Legend of Zelda_ games, and it was playing the theme music to the game in the music practise room during one lunchtime at school that had garnered Loras’ attention initially), and Loras on lead guitar (whenever necessary), drums and primary vocals; they mostly played the student cafes and bars on campus, with the occasional gig in one of the lesser-frequented bars in town whenever they had the money for the cover fee.

Loras is waiting for him with Sam when he gets there, using two biros to drum on the lid of the tall bin outside whilst Sam leans against him with his nose in a textbook. Sam studies biomedical sciences, to Loras’ eternal dismay; Loras, an English student, has five contact hours a week and loves it. Sam has five times as many and is therefore next to never available for dates or lunchtime quickies like Loras always wants. (They managed to fuck in the labs once, quickly, with the hem of Sam’s lab coat stuffed in Loras’ mouth to keep him quiet, before being caught by Dr. Mormont and having to promise very quickly and, in Loras’ case, with legs still shaking from the afterglow, never to do so again.)

They follow Renly inside as he approaches the head desk, batting his eyelashes at the receptionist, Brienne (who Loras spent the first six months of their practising on campus calling _Brian_ ) and giving her his most winning smile. She melts like warm butter, as he knew she would, and hands over the practise room key with a shy smile in return.

‘Brienne, you’re a diamond,’ Renly says over his shoulder as they head upstairs to their room, and Loras snorts.

‘She’s so gone over you it’s not even funny anymore.’

Sam makes a disparaging noise, frowning at him, and Loras protests.

‘What? It’s not. Like, all you have to do is look at her and she’s _Yes Renly, no Renly, three bags full Renly_ -’

‘Leave her alone,’ Sam says, soft but firm, and Loras huffs.

‘Besides,’ Renly says with a sly grin, ‘you’re just as bad. From what I’ve heard from Jon, you’re very much _Yes Sam, no Sam, three bags full Sam_ yourself when you want to be.’

Sam goes scarlet. Loras just winks at Renly and kisses his boyfriend’s cheek, slinging an arm around his shoulders and squeezing before pulling a chair out for Sam to sit. Once his boyfriend is settled and his nose back in his biomed textbook, Loras descends on the drumkit, pulling his sticks out of his bag and fiddling with the snare tuning, tapping every so often before he gets the sound he wants. Renly sits down at the piano, playing a couple of scales and then the first few bars of _Piano Man_ by Billy Joel, just to make Sam smile.

‘Ren, stop flirting with my boyfriend,’ Loras says, still intent on tuning the drumkit, and Renly laughs.

‘You’re just sulking because I haven’t serenaded you with _your_ favourite song yet.’

‘If you _can_ do a piano arrangement of Enter Shikari’s _Torn Apart_ , be my guest.’

‘Is that the one that goes like-’ Renly asks, and starts playing it, challenging grin on his face, and Loras’ head snaps up, eyes wide.

‘You fucker!’ he gasps, throwing a drumstick at Renly. ‘How long have you been keeping _that_ one quiet?’

Renly laughs and ducks, shrugging. ‘A little while. I got bored one day when I was up here and started trying to play all of my favourite songs from memory, and then I remembered that night we were at yours and shitfaced and you kept going ‘Ren - Ren, dude, we gotta learn to play this-’ and put that song on. So I queued it up on YouTube and just kept playing it on repeat until I could join in.’

‘You’re a fucking genius, you know that?’ Loras asks. ‘Chuck us back my drumstick.’

Renly rolls his eyes and throws it back to him, switching to Kate Bush’s _Wuthering Heights_ , singing along in as high-pitched and annoying a voice as possible. Loras threatens him with a drumstick somewhere the sun doesn’t shine, and he grins. They need to practise their setlist after all, which is a bunch of covers of their favourite songs - _Zombie_ by the Cranberries, _Chocolate_ by the 1975, _Budapest_ by George Ezra, _Lover of the Light_ by Mumford & Sons, _Billie Jean_ by Michael Jackson, _Pumped Up Kicks_ by Foster the People, and _Naive_ by the Kooks. They’re due to play the campus bar’s Indie night on Friday, and it’s been a couple of weeks since their last practise because they’d both been busy with summer jobs and finishing off uni prep work and the like (and Sam had had a week-long holiday from his job at his father’s plant machinery business, during which Loras had - and he had told Renly this in _far_ too excruciating detail - not let Sam out of his bed all week ‘except to piss, shit or eat’.), so they’re a little rusty on counts. They start off with _Pumped Up Kicks_ , meaning Renly has to get up off the piano stool and fetch his bass, easily losing himself in the deep thrum of the music and Loras’ husky voice that still sends shivers down his spine.

Sam taps his foot idly along to the music, and Renly grins at him over Sam’s textbook.

‘ _Robert’s got a quick hand, he’ll look around the room, he won’t tell you his plan_ …’

They practise for going on three hours, until Brienne comes, looking overly apologetic, to politely kick them out because the university Glee choir has booked the room from six onwards and it’s five fifty-eight. Renly nods, all charming smiles, and helps Loras pack away the instruments before they vacate the room. Loras and Sam have a dinner date, so he waves them goodbye - making Loras swear not to tell him a thing about whatever does or doesn’t happen afterwards, and knowing full well that he’ll get the second-by-second breakdown anyway because Loras is a massive troll who enjoys scarring Renly for life with too much detail about his sex life - and heads to the bus stop. He needs a pint.

* * *

The pub isn’t too busy, it being a Thursday night, and there’s plenty of space at the bar. Renly knows the barmaid, Sansa, fairly well; she’s in some of his Art History lectures, a first year at the university along with Loras and Sam. She knows him (or at least his order) just as well - she’s already pouring a pint of the Goose Island IPA, and he grins at her, pushing a fiver across the bar for his drink and telling her to put the change in the tips jar. She blushes to the tips of her ears, but does so, and he takes a sip of his drink with no small degree of pleasure. There’s a new barman today as well, someone he’s not seen before, of similar build to Renly himself - if about three inches shorter - with auburn hair that curls around his temples and the nape of his neck, and the bluest eyes Renly’s ever seen. He’s almost a carbon copy of Sansa, if Sansa was scruff-chinned and stocky instead of lithe and elegant and female, and although it feels uncharitable to say, Renly is far more inclined to want to know this man better. In every sense, not just the Biblical (although God knows he wants to fuck or be fucked by him through a mattress as well).

The man has a pleasantly rough Yorkshire accent when he stops by Renly to ask if he can get him anything else, and Renly finds himself tongue-tied for the first time in _years_.

‘You another Stark, then? I’ve not seen you around before.’

The barman laughs, pushing his sleeves up over ruddy forearms, lightly furred in brown hair, and Renly wants those strong hands all over his skin. ‘I’m Robb. Sansa’s brother.’

‘That explains the likeness,’ Renly mumbles, almost to himself, and Robb smiles. His front teeth are a little crooked, one tucked ever so slightly behind the other as though he’d had braces but not worn his retainers (Renly, who had been train-tracked for three years as a teenager and had only just stopped having to wear his retainers at all now, at the age of twenty-one, can sympathise), and it makes Renly’s heart skip a little in his chest. There’s a spray of freckles over his nose as well, a dimple in one cheek, and if Robb doesn’t stop smiling at him and just being so bloody gorgeous at him, Renly is going to do or say something he’s going to regret, because this just isn’t fair.

‘So. You alright with just the Goose, aye?’

God, that _accent_. Renly forces himself to imagine Sansa’s father, solemn, long-faced Ned, saying it to him instead, and feels the hot curl of lust in his stomach dampen a little.

‘Uh, yeah. Thanks.’

‘No problem,’ Robb says, with another crooked-toothed smile, and wanders off down to the other end of the bar to serve another customer. Renly catches himself leaning forward to watch his arse in his jeans as he does so, and looks up to see Arya - Sansa’s little sister - watching him with a sort of faintly disgusted amusement on her face. He gives her the finger - the universal sign for _bugger off!_ \- and busies himself again with his pint, ignoring the flush he can feel climbing up his cheeks.

* * *

The day of the band’s gig at the student bar, Renly is fending off Loras’ attempts to nick half of his lunch on the steps outside the languages and literature building, Sam sat on Loras’ other side and wisely preventing any attempts to rob him of his lunch by eating vegetarian. Renly stabs his plastic fork into the back of Loras’ hand as he makes yet another slow, creeping attack on his bacon and tomato pasta, and grins viciously at the outraged wail of pain.

‘Mitts off, Tyrell.’

‘Sam,’ Loras immediately turns to his boyfriend, pouting, eyes wide and tearing up at the corners, a natural-born actor, ‘Sam, Renly is assaulting me.’

Sam just hums, engaged in making notes for his upcoming pharmacology lecture. ‘You can have some of mine, if you like.’ He offers Loras his tofu and beansprout chow mein, and Loras crinkles his nose.

‘Not enough dead thing in it.’

Sam shrugs. ‘Then go get something _with_ ‘dead thing’ in it.’

‘But I’m skint!’

‘Then you shouldn’t have spent your student loan on an Xbox One,’ Sam murmurs, engrossed in his textbook, and Renly guffaws.

‘You didn’t. You dickhead, Loras, you won’t get anything else you won’t have to actually _work for_ until January.’

‘Shut up,’ Loras grumbles, and tickles him until he drops his pasta, promptly stealing it and all but inhaling the four or five forkfuls left whilst Renly catches his breath.

Once the beast (Renly’s nickname for Loras’ bottomless pit of a stomach) has been sated, they make their way to the bar, where Renly’s bass, guitar and keyboard and Loras’ drums and mic have already been set up. There are a couple of interested people milling about in the surrounding area, one guy stopping to plink at Renly’s guitar before he meets Loras’ eye and quickly pulls his hand back; Sam makes himself comfortable in a booth nearby with a lemonade and the mountain of notes he’s got to try and compile into an essay whilst the set goes on, and Renly and Loras start the soundcheck and tuning their instruments. Loras is still trying to get Renly to agree to let them play the Enter Shikari arrangement he’d performed earlier, but Renly’s already going hoarse from the three class presentations he’d had to do this afternoon (he hates his seminar leaders’ guts right now), and anything above the standard soft indie volume of _Pumped Up Kicks_ is going to wreck his throat.

Once Loras is happy with the setup of his drums, they launch into the first song, _Budapest_. Loras’ husky, smoky voice suits the song perfectly, and several more people trickle in through the doors to stand around near where they’re performing, drinks in their hands and a couple filming the set on Snapchat on their phones. Loras grins at them, tossing his head to flick a dangling curl out of his eyes, and Renly swears he hears one of the girls actually sigh like something out of _Grease_ and lean forward, trying to catch his best friend’s eye. He smirks to himself - _good luck, love_ \- and focuses on the music.

The next song they play is Mumford and Sons, _Lover of the Light_ , which Renly takes over as lead vocalist for. He’s the one who learned how to play this first, and Loras always says that he sings it better. All the same, his voice cracks horribly during the chorus, going thin and hoarse, and he winces, sending Loras a look that means _you’re on your own tonight_. Loras nods, lending his own voice to back Renly up a bit.

‘ _I know I tried, I was not stable. Flawed by pride, I miss my sanguine eyes; so hold my hands up, breathe in and breathe out_ …’

Once they finish the song, Loras makes a quick excuse to the collected crowd whilst Renly heads to the bar for a glass of water with lemon juice to ease his throat. Sansa pops up seemingly out of nowhere, throwing her arms around him in a tight hug and beaming.

‘I didn’t know you were in a band!’

‘Just me and Loras, not really a band if it’s only two of us,’ Renly croaks, and Sansa’s face falls in sympathy.

‘Oh no, you sound awful!’

‘Thanks, we try.’

‘No, not - not the band. You’re really good. Just _you_ , _you_ sound awful.’ She slaps his hand away when he passes the bartender a couple of quid in coins to pay for his drink, and taps her own card instead, paying for her vodka and coke and his drink all together. ‘Will that help? Won’t lemon make it worse? It’s so - harsh.’

‘That’s why it’s diluted with the water. And the gomme, to make it drinkable.’ He grimaces. ‘Still probably going to have to hold my nose and think of England to get it down myself, though. Christ, trust me to wreck my voice the day we have a gig. I’m going to kill Baelish, he’s the one that gave me two presentations to do today because ‘we’re not going to have enough time next week to cover your other topic in enough detail, Renly, so why don’t you do both today?’. Bastard.’

Sansa nods in sympathy. Baelish is one of the postgraduate teaching assistants and helps run seminars across several subjects; he’s desperately unpopular amongst students and lecturers alike, for his borderline creepy interest in first years (especially blue-eyed redheads like Sansa, which just makes Renly’s skin crawl) and his sly, smirking comments that always seem to find their mark and prick at any insecurities. Renly vividly remembers the first time he had had Baelish for a seminar and they had been discussing the figure in classical art; someone had brought up the fact that all of the male statues either from or modelled on the Greco-Roman Classical period had tiny cocks, and Renly had pointed out that that was supposed to portray intelligence. Baelish had given him a slanted look from over the top of the PC and made a joke along the lines of how much time Renly must spend looking at cocks, and Renly had almost gone to his lecturer about it before he decided that he wouldn’t give Baelish the satisfaction. All the same, he hated Baelish even more from that point onwards.

Renly sits out of the next song. Loras doesn’t need any backing other than his own guitar for _Naive_ , meaning Renly can perch in the booth with Sam and Sansa and drink to soothe his throat. Sam and Sansa know each other as well, as it turns out, through Sansa’s half-sibling Jon; Sam inquires about the Stark family and Jon’s health, and Renly tunes them out, humming along to Loras’ singing, until he hears the name Robb mentioned and snaps back to the conversation.

‘-Robb’s trying to get Mum and Dad to host a live music night, you know, to bring more people under the age of fifty into the pub. Mum thinks it’s a good idea, but Robb could say he wanted to murder newborn puppies and Mum would agree, you know what she’s like, he’s the apple of her eye.’ She shakes her head. ‘Jon and I are working on wearing Dad down. I think he knows it makes sense, he’s just loathe to give up his quiet weekday nights to a bunch of students who are going to want cocktails he doesn’t know how to make and potentially having to listen to people who can’t play for love nor money try and wail their way through _Wonderwall_.’

‘Did you say you’re looking for bands to play?’ Renly asks, rubbing the side of his neck, over his soulmark. It itches slightly, prickling with heat, and he glances over his shoulder to see Loras finishing up with the song and pulling at his tshirt to get a little more airflow. The student bar is hot with the crush of bodies and the lack of aircon, and he makes a sympathetic face. Loras sends him the ‘you okay?’ hand signal and Renly nods, holding up his now half-empty glass and stroking his throat.

‘Loras and I could play. We should be half-decent enough.’

‘Thursday night, say 6?’ Sansa asks, tapping at her phone, and Renly nods.

‘Thursday at six it is.’

* * *

Thursday afternoon is cold, wet and bleak in central London, with the sort of rain that mists down but gets you soaked to the bone anyway, and Renly and Loras arrive at the Starks’ pub in Kensal Rise looking like a pair of drowned rats as they lug guitar cases and a keyboard into the back room, cleared especially for them by Sansa and Jon. Jon is sat with their girlfriend Ygritte and Sam at a small table, pints of bitter in front of Jon and Ygritte and Sam’s customary lemonade in front of him. For once, he’s not got his head buried in a book, and he smiles when Loras makes a beeline for their table and wraps his arms around him from behind, pressing soggy curls against his cheek to kiss the corner of his eye.

‘Hey, baby.’

‘Hi,’ Sam says, still shy despite having been with Loras for over three years now, and he runs his fingers through Loras’ wet hair affectionately. Loras beams at him whilst Jon and Ygritte make gagging noises and wave Renly over too.

‘Alright, Renly?’ Jon asks, pulling him into a hug and slapping him on the back. Ygritte does the same, even harder than Jon, and Renly’s pretty sure her hand has probably left a bruise over his spine. He’s more than used to Ygritte by now, though, and given that she lets him get away with stealing a sip of her pint when she’s not quite looking, he’ll let the injury-inflicting welcome slide. He sits down next to Loras and turns back to Jon.

‘I’ll live,’ he says, ‘provided I can hit the Strepsils tonight. I hear it’s yourself and Sansa we have to thank for Mr Stark finally being worn down enough to let us play?’

Jon nods and laughs. ‘Yeah. Well, me, Sansa and Robb. Apparently he heard this one,’ he gestures to Loras, ‘busking outside the Angel Islington Tube station last weekend and has been begging to get Dad to get him to play since. Didn’t realise he was in a band with you, though.’

‘That’s ’cause yer blind as a bat when you wanna be,’ Ygritte tells him, taking a gulp of her pint, and Jon rolls their eyes at her.

‘Eh?’

‘You ’eard. Pig bloody ignorant.’ She grins into her bitter, and Jon dips their fingers into their own to flick droplets of beer at her. She opens her mouth to suck them clean instead, and Renly nopes out of the conversation at the same time as Jon’s grey eyes go wide and they bite their lip.

‘Save it for the bedroom!’ comes a voice from the corner of the bar, laughter in their tone, and Renly turns around to see Robb leaning across the bar to shout at his half-sibling. Ygritte flicks him V’s, and he responds in kind before turning to Renly.

‘They’ve all got drinks. Can I get the band anythin’?’

‘Just water for me, please. Loras’ll probably have a cider now and then water for when we start?’

‘Sure thing,’ Robb says, ‘coming right up.’

Renly waits by the bar for their drinks, and brings Loras’ over once Robb has poured it. He goes back with his wallet to pay, but Robb waves him off.

‘On the house. So, Renly - it’s Renly, ain’t it? - what d’you do when you’re not studying and playing music?’

‘What is this, a job interview? ‘Tell us about yourself. What can you bring to the company?’’ Renly jokes, and rubs at his soulmark tattoo again whilst he thinks. ‘I don’t really have much time for anything outside of uni work and the band, but I suppose I read. I’m rereading _The Lord of the Rings_ for about the eight hundredth time at the moment. It’s not like I can’t recite all three volumes back to front in my sleep, but they’re so good.’

Robb fixes him with another heart-stopping, crooked-toothed smile. ‘I dig that you know it’s three volumes, not three books.’

‘It’s not a trilogy! I hate when people call it a trilogy!’ Renly bursts out, and hears Loras groan and say ‘He’s off on that _Lord of the Rings_ rant again-’ behind him, to the amusement of Sam, Jon and Ygritte. ‘Tolkien specifies on the title page of each _volume_ that it’s ‘being the first part of’, ‘second part of’ and ‘third part of _The Lord of the Rings_ ’ - **_not_ ** one book and then a sequel and then another sequel. The movies are a trilogy, the books are one whole in three parts.’ He takes a sip of his water. ‘And don’t get me started on the movies, actually. Peter Jackson did so well with the actual _Lord of the Rings_ movies, and then he completely made up practically the entire second _Hobbit_ film - and whose bright idea was it to stretch one three-hundred page book across three films, like Bilbo doesn’t say in the first _LOTR_ book ‘I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread’ - like _The Hobbit_ stretched over three fucking films!’

Robb grins at him, chin in his hand, and nods. ‘You’re a nerd,’ he says, with a smile in his voice as well as on his face. ‘I haven’t met anyone as into this as you, probably ever.’

‘You’re not a fan?’ Renly asks, suddenly feeling a bit awkward. Robb shakes his head.

‘Nah. I’ve read them, I’ve seen the movies, but I’m not really an elves-and-fairies type fantasy person.’

‘There aren’t any fairies in _Lord of the Rings_ ,’ Renly immediately corrects, and Robb laughs.

‘If we ever have a Tolkien round in the pub quiz, I want you on my team,’ he says, and pops open a can of Coke beneath the bar, taking a sip. Renly deliberately doesn’t watch the bob of his Adam’s apple in his throat, the purse of his slightly chapped lips around the opening in the can lid, the way his eyes flutter shut for a second with the lashes casting shadows over his cheeks before they blink open again, brilliant blue under the lights. ‘I’m more into sci-fi. _Star Wars_ , _Star Trek_ , that kind of thing.’

‘Isn’t that kind of a fandom oxymoron?’ Renly asks. ‘I thought it was very much a one-or-the-other kind of thing.’

‘Well, my favourite’s _Battlestar Galactica_ ,’ Robb says with another grin, and walks off back around to the main section of the bar to serve another customer.

Six o’clock rolls around not too long afterwards, and Renly helps Loras set up their instruments, shaking the rain off his keyboard cover before unzipping it and resting the keyboard on a table whilst he unfolds the stand. Loras gets him to play scales to tune his guitar to, pick between his teeth and capo hanging off the belt loop of his jeans. Once they’re ready, Loras turns to Sam.

‘Okay, baby, what d’you wanna hear?’

‘ _Piano Man_!’ Renly shouts through cupped hands, ignoring how hoarse and scratchy his voice sounds. Sam smiles and shakes his head, thinking for a moment, and then picks something completely unexpected.

‘ _Uptown Girl_.’

‘You’re joking,’ Loras says, shaking his head, and looks about ready to protest until Renly starts playing the intro on his keyboard and Loras is forced, however unwillingly, to join in. Sam’s love and Loras’ irrational hatred of Billy Joel was a constant source of amusement for their friend group; Renly, Jon and Ygritte all had a competition going to see who could get Loras to keep a Billy Joel ringtone for the longest before he realised what it was. So far Ygritte was winning, with _She’s Always A Woman_ and twenty-four minutes and thirty-six seconds (and counting).

Loras is forced not only to play it, but to sing it, as well, because Renly refuses with a shit-eating grin on his face. No matter how much he hates it, Loras won’t allow himself to sing badly, however, and before long ten or so other people have joined them in the back room and are swaying along, whilst Sam looks like he’s in heaven as his boyfriend sings his favourite song back to him. It’s almost nauseating, the sheer adoration on his face, but they make such a sweet couple that Renly can’t bring himself to be anything other than totally charmed. Luckily, Jon and Ygritte have no such reservations, and are rolling their eyes and pretending to puke onto the floor the whole way through until Loras finishes the song and swears blind that the next person to ask for a Billy Joel song will be eviscerated with his guitar pick. Renly nearly shouts ‘ _Piano Man_!’ again, but the expression on Loras’ face is deadly serious and it might be best not to push his luck.

He raises his voice so he can be heard around the corner in the main room. ‘Robb!’

‘Yeah?’ A curly, auburn head pokes around the corner.

‘What d’you wanna hear?’

‘ _Africa_ by Toto.’

Sansa groans from where she’s clearing away glasses from a nearby table. ‘Robb-’

‘I live for the memes, sis!’ Robb shouts back as he walks around the corner again, laughing, and Renly strikes up with the first few bars on his keyboard. Truth be told, this is one of Renly’s favourite songs ever, one he remembers Cressen playing around the house all the time when he was little, and he and Loras grin at each other as they launch into the chorus, supported by every other voice in the bar as well (bar Sansa’s).

‘ _It’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you - that’s something that a hundred men or more could never do! I bless the rains down in Aaaafricaaa_ …!’

* * *

After their set, Renly’s voice is all but gone entirely. Loras has departed with Sam, probably to have marathon loving sex to Billy Joel records (Renly doesn’t want to know), Jon and Ygritte have moved on to another pub, and Robb is clearing the tables in the room of empty glasses. Renly gets up from his chair to help, collecting pint glasses from their friends’ table and leaving them on the edge of the bar. Robb smiles at him.

‘Cheers.’

‘No problem,’ Renly whispers, his stomach erupting in butterflies at the sight of Robb’s smile, and ducks his head, hiding behind the loose curtain of black hair and focusing on helping collect the rest of the glasses.

‘You guys are really good,’ Robb tells him as he loads the dishwasher. ‘You signed?’

‘God, no. This is - we do this for fun. It’s just pissing around with a keyboard and some drums.’

‘It’s _good_ pissin’ around with a keyboard and drums,’ Robb says, and kicks the dishwasher door closed gently. ‘Wish I could ‘piss around’ on any instrument as good as you two can.’

‘I also play ocarina,’ Renly blurts out, ‘but I’m not as good at that.’

Robb blinks, nonplussed. ‘What the fuck’s an ocarina when it’s at home?’

Renly blushes fiercely. ‘The - thing Link plays in the _Legend of Zelda_ games.’

Robb stares at him for a second and then cracks up laughing, doubled over. ‘No way. Oh my God.’

‘I know.’

‘That’s - Jesus,’ he giggles. ‘ _Wow._ ’

‘Yeah,’ Renly says, and runs his hands through his hair.

‘You like the _Legend of Zelda_ games?’ Robb asks, leaning against the bar. His body looks longer like this, languid and stretched out and full of promise, and Renly feels that pesky hot curl of want in his stomach again, fighting not to allow his gaze to drag hungrily up and down that expanse of Robb’s body, and especially not to linger on the sliver of skin showing between the (low, very low) waistband of his jeans and the hem of his tshirt, where the v of his hipbones and the beginning of an auburn-brown happy trail is visible in the smoky light. Renly’s mouth goes dry, and he swallows compulsively.

‘Yes.’

‘You wanna come over sometime and play? I haven’t played them in years, I need a buddy.’ He grins at Renly. ‘It’s that or watch _Lord of the Rings_ with me.’

‘You don’t want to watch _Lord of the Rings_ with me,’ Renly tells him. ‘Loras says it’s like watching a movie with his English professor, the one that drones on for half an hour past the end of the lecture without actually saying anything.’

Robb chuckles. ‘Offer still stands.’

* * *

Renly allows himself to think about it for maybe two days before admitting to himself that he does want to watch _Lord of the Rings_ with Robb, or play _Legend of Zelda_ with Robb, or do literally anything with Robb that involves the pair of them in any sort of close quarters. And so, the Sunday after their gig at the Starks’ pub he finds himself walking through the front doors again at 8pm with the intent of taking Robb up on his offer. Sansa spots him from behind the bar and waves. ‘Goose Island?’

‘Uh, no, actually,’ Renly says awkwardly. ‘I, uh. Is Robb around?’

‘He’s upstairs,’ Sansa says with a smile. ‘I’ll get him for you.’

She comes back around the corner with her brother in tow a couple of minutes later; his face brightens when he spots Renly, and he flips up the bar hatch for Renly to step through and follow him into the back where the stairs to the family’s flat on the top two floors joined the pub floor.

‘So, have you decided? Movies or games?’

‘Movies,’ Renly says, on the spur of the moment, and Robb grins, leading the way up two flights of stairs to the attic. His room takes up the whole space, with the roof sloping on either side and piles of books, dvds and games teetering in every corner. The bed is unmade, a laptop sitting open on the duvet and pillows thrown to the end of the bed; Robb tidies it a bit, self-conscious, before sitting down and patting the space beside him for Renly to join him. He holds up the extended edition DVDs of the _Hobbit_ films; Renly shakes his head.

‘Oh no.’

‘Oh yes.’

‘You’re making a terrible mistake.’

‘And I can’t wait,’ Robb says, grinning at him, and pops open the disk drive of his laptop to load the first movie and open his VLC player. He stands up on his bed to lower the blind on the skylight, turning the room dark around them, and then sits back down, legs stretched out in front of him and leaning against the pillows propped against the headboard, to hit play. Renly copies him, shifting slightly to get comfortable, and settles down to watch.

The peace lasts around fifteen minutes.

‘But where are their cloaks?’ Renly asks angrily, gesticulating. ‘That’s like - a whole thing! Each dwarf is identified by the colour of his cloak or the tassel on the hood - Thorin’s is sky-blue with a silver tassel because he’s the prince, and Kili and Fili wore blue too, and Balin’s is red, and Dwalin’s is dark green-’

Robb is watching him with something like fondness in his eyes, a tiny smile on his lips, as Renly vents furiously, waving his arms around. He’s never met anyone so unapologetically nerdy, so passionate about a video game that they learned to play ocarina because of it, so invested in Tolkien and his dwarves’ cloak hood colours; it’s charming. He loves the way Renly’s face lights up when he talks about literally anything, the warmth in his voice even when it’s thin and squeaky like today as he recovers from having lost it over the course of their set on Thursday, the brightness of his eyes and the dimple in his left cheek that deepens whenever he opens his mouth. He reaches out and cups the back of Renly’s neck with one hand, thumb brushing over the golden rose at his neck, and Renly shivers, feeling the skin flare hot and tingle the way it does whenever Loras touches him there.

‘This your soulmate mark?’ Robb breathes, soft and low, and Renly nods.

Robb strokes over it again, and Renly moans softly at the bloom of warmth in the pit of his stomach. He almost wants to explain, explain that no matter how many marks Loras’ touch might leave on his skin, they’re friends and nothing more; he doesn’t ache for Loras’ fingers on his body the way he does for Robb’s, doesn’t feel like he’ll die if Loras doesn’t touch him the way he’s dying for Robb’s hands, lips, skin on his skin. He arches his back slightly, pressing closer, and Robb tugs him forward gently. Renly’s eyes grow wide as their mouths get closer and closer until Robb’s lips are on his, warm and dry and a little chapped against his own, roughened by the cold weather; he squeaks in surprise, and Robb grins against his mouth, tongue slipping out to trace the seam of Renly’s lips and ask entrance.

He opens his mouth slightly, obedient, and lets his eyes fall shut as Robb deepens the kiss, pulls him closer and moves his other hand up to tangle in Renly’s hair, the movie still playing, forgotten, behind them on the bed. Renly sighs shakily and Robb smiles again, licking at the inside of Renly’s mouth, before he pulls away.

‘You’re such a geek, Christ. Fucking dwarves and their hoods - I’m kissin’ you and you’re still thinking about it, ain’t yer?’

Renly grins, nodding sheepishly, and Robb kisses him again with a fond shake of his head, determined that this time Renly’s attention will be all on him.

**Author's Note:**

> P.S. Reel - you have no idea how lucky I felt to have gotten you as my gift-receiver! I knew straightaway what to make for all of your gifts, and I really, really hope you like(d) them!


End file.
